I wanted to start by talking about Trello. Now I need to make myself clear. This might seem like a love letter. I say this because I do absolutely love using Trello. I think the flexibility of Trello is what makes it so appealing to me.
Recently, there has been a surge in the way technology companies develop that apps. This has consisted mainly of block thinking. If you want a good example of block thinking, then you need not to look any further than the recent WordPress update. This is a great example of how trends in digital tools and productivity are changing and heading towards smart technology has also made similar movements.
I’m aware that a lot of people may have been drawn to this post because of the word agile, but equally. Many may not know the real nature of Agile is. In essence it’s about prioritising workloads in batches. The notion comes from looking at the way manufacturing companies use their conveyor belt to produce and create stock.
Trello is wonderful. You can use it in a way to plan your weeks ahead. and every column, could be a different week, therefore your board would be a month. You could also have the columns as months. The column structure, could be anything you want. Looking at the productivity quadrant of prioritising your tasks from most urgent and important to least important and not urgent, It would clearly make sense to implement this style into the Trello columns.
I guess is where agile comes in. It’s really challenging to come up with content that’s effective, and to keep churning things out. My way of dealing with this is to simply action your tasks in order of production stage.
I have the first two columns dedicated to ideas. The first one is top level ideas. The second one is more ideas that I have qualified and taken time to consider. I would then take a look at those and move them along.
So the third column would obviously be your work in progress, or first draft. After that, it’s up to you what to add. It’s my suggestion that you start with setting yourself a goal like a completed date. Once you have met the date, then you can move that card into the completed column. The next thing to do would be to schedule.
This is where thinking in this batch process and agile manner really does pay off. You are now able to have a look at content like stock or products and check on the amount of content you have created in a small space of time.
You could use plugins to measure your sprint time. This is basically how fast or how long you’ve spent on one particular card. Sprint is an official productivity term describing mini marathons of asctions.
By categorising your labels to mark various social media feeds you can glance at where your content is going. Sitting back on your chair, you can now look at everything that you’ve done and what is in the first phase, compared to what’s in the final phase of the content work.
You can equally now see where that content is going. My bet is that you don’t do podcasting. Apologies if I am wrong. Most people don’t because there is a fear in that, or just an unknown factor on how to do it and how to update podcast. That’s okay. I think it’s smart to maybe consider different types of media in your marketing mix. Looking at how you are creating content and how you’re thinking about where it is going is key.
If we go back to your ideas bucket / column. How many of your ideas have you visualised in a way where you can see them as video blog posts, any text, or even audio only. By diversifying one content element into these different mediums you are able to potentially leverage more SEO and ranking. You are now able to increase your potential reach and see where your message goes.
Who would have thought it. A simple content strategy plan. Developed in Trello for agile productivity. This blog post is a bit short. If you need a better walkthrough then feel free to contact me. I’m sure I would be able to find a way to create a strategy in no time at all.
